


just for the record

by jemmasimmmons



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, decidedly less angsty than the prompt intended, i can never think of a reason for them to break up, postgraduates au, so miscommunication and selflessness it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 14:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5251646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jemmasimmmons/pseuds/jemmasimmmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There was a tape recorder sitting on his bed and on the underside of it was stuck a shiny white label that read: ‘property of Jemma Simmons’. Next to her name was doodled a tiny silver star, and Fitz ran his finger over the pen mark before heaving a deep sigh."</p><p>Or, Leopold Fitz has a broken heart and his best friend's deepest secrets held in the palm of his hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	just for the record

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off of the prompt: “I found your box of letters underneath my bed last night and because I’m a nosy motherfucker I decided to read them and it turns out they were all addressed to me and the last one was dated the day you moved out and I’m not quite sure why i thought this would be a good idea but here I am, standing on your doorstep, wondering why the fuck we’re not together anymore”, which I tweaked a little bit for obviously reasons where the canon was just too tempting not to twist in there.
> 
> A lot of this is inspired (naturally) by the scene in 3x07 where Fitz is watching Jemma's videos from her phone and also by Cindy's (Anthropologicality) fic called "tonight the headphones will deliver you the words that i can’t say" where Jemma makes recordings throughout her relationship with Fitz. It's such a beautiful fic and I cannot recommend enough to you.
> 
> I hope you enjoy this!

 

 

There was a tape recorder sitting on his bed and on the underside of it was stuck a shiny white label that read: ‘property of Jemma Simmons’. Next to her name was doodled a tiny silver star, and Fitz ran his finger over the pen mark before heaving a deep sigh.

He let the recorder drop back onto his sheets and rubbed his hands across his face. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, as if having them closed for long enough would make the dilemma sitting in front of him any easier to face.

Fitz opened one eye.

The tape recorder was still sitting where he had dropped it, Jemma’s star was still gleaming at him and the glaring problem he was being faced with tonight was still sending waves of distress curling around his middle and squeezing it tight.

Fitz groaned, and let his head drop forward into his hands.

He hadn’t meant to start thinking about Jemma tonight. Not that he ever really _meant_ to think about her at all. In fact, when it came to Jemma it almost felt like she never really left his mind at all. No matter what he did, or where he went, or what he said, there always seemed to be something that would lead him back to her.

 _It’s like I’m a compass_ , Fitz thought dryly, _and she’s due north_.

In the beginning, during their first days of university as promising journalism students, Jemma had started out as a friend and the most extraordinary friend Fitz had ever had. She was brilliant, but it hadn’t only been her brain that had blinded him during those early days, when he had hid at the back of the lecture theatre while she sat front and centre. He had been captivated by her kindness, and the easy way in which she folded her life around his so they would fit together and by the way her smile could light up a cold January morning like it cost her nothing to give to him.

Even now, Fitz still found himself growing warmer when he thought about that smile.

They had crossed the line between friends and best friends before either of them had known it had happened. She had practically lived in his student flat, keeping a toothbrush in his bathroom and refusing to take his bed when he offered it to her in regular fits of chivalry, resulting in both of them stubbornly sleeping on the floor whenever she slept over. He had never told her, but Fitz had liked that better than letting her sleep in his bed. There had been something infinitely reassuring about waking in the middle of the night and knowing she was asleep only an arm’s reach away.

It was only after that that their boundaries had become murkier, less clear for the two of them to see. There had always been kisses, chaste ones on cheeks on high days and holy days and later there were drunken ones too, at the myriad of student parties Jemma had dragged him to, insistent that they experience at least one a month as an essential part of an average university experience.

The drunken ones had become more and more frequent towards the end of their studies, taking less alcohol to induce and sending deeper thrums through Fitz’s body every time Jemma pressed her lips to his. Those kind of kisses continued to occur after their graduation, and became no longer restricted to the chaos of student parties. Instead, they began to happen in the solitude of his apartment and to the soundtrack of their own two heartbeats playing in perfect rhythm with the other. Six months after their graduation, Fitz thought that they might have finally crossed that last final line and become something more than best friends. Something bigger, something greater and something even more beautiful.

But that had been before he had seen her opened letter, from the media centre in Boston they had both applied to work at after graduation, poking out of her handbag. Jemma had been offered a job there, effective immediately if she wanted it. Fitz had stared at the paper in his hands, blankly, alone in his kitchen.

Meanwhile, his own rejection letter had taunted him from the top of the bin.

It had been three months since then. Three months since the last time she had stayed over at his place and not mentioned her letter to him once. They had eaten dinner together and watched films and Jemma had fallen asleep in his arms at 2 a.m, leaving him to spend the night breathing in the sweet smell of her hair and trying not to think about how he might never have the chance to do it again.

If there was anything Jemma Simmons deserved, it was the world. And Leopold Fitz would be damned if it was him of all people who was holding her back from that.

It had been three months since he had stopped picking up her calls and started pretending he wasn’t home when she knocked, sitting on the ground with his back against the front door until he heard her melancholy footsteps retreat down the steps. It had been three months since he’d seen her smile.

In other words, it had been the worst fucking three months of his life.

Rubbing at his temples, Fitz picked up Jemma’s tape recorder again, turning it over and over in his palm and running his fingertips along the row of buttons at the top.

She had had it for as long as he’d known her, which would be five years that September, and yet for all the times he had seen her talk into it from a distance, whispering her secrets into the microphone, he had never heard any of those recordings. Now, after tripping over the machine when he had moved his bed to hoover for the first time in six months (other items discovered had included a spatula, a lost pair of underpants and a blueberry muffin so mouldy it could have been classed as hazardous material), Fitz was presented with the agonizing dilemma of whether or not to listen to them.

If he did, then he was most definitely infringing on Jemma’s privacy. He had first thought that the machine was just a tool for her budding journalism career, but as he came to know her better he understood that she used the recorder like other people used diaries, quickly stopping her tape whenever anyone got close enough to over hear her and keeping it on her person at almost all times, even tucking it under her pillow before she slept in a manner that was uncharacteristically shy. On the other hand, if he _didn’t_ listen to them…

During their friendship, Fitz had thought he had Jemma Simmons perfectly pinned down. He thought he had known her likes and her dislikes, how she took her tea and which side of her body she preferred to sleep on. He had thought he knew her every fear in the universe, and he had certainly known the lengths he would go to fight them with her. The only thing he had never been sure of was what devastating complexities were written on her heart. And now, he was holding it in the palm of his hand.

Making a split second decision, Fitz shook his head.

‘Screw it,’ he muttered to himself, and opened up the recorder to look at the tape inside.

It was an old fashioned cassette, made of clear plastic with brown tape coiled up inside and there was another label stuck to the front. This one read ‘Fitz’, and had a small yellow sun drawn on next to it. Fitz stared at his name, written in her neatly printed handwriting, before slotting it back inside the recorder and pressing play.

 

 

_“This is Jemma Simmons, beginning her progress log for her BA degree in Journalism.”_

It was the first time he had heard her voice in three months andFitz was struck by how young she sounded, and then he remembered that she must have only been eighteen when she’d made the recording. She _had_ been young.

_“It’s Friday today, and the end of my first week here. It was…as was to be expected. My supervisor is perfectly fine, although he didn’t seem as enthused at the prospect of looking through my summer writing portfolio as I might have thought he would be, which is rather a disappointment. The course outline was as I remembered it, but it was curious to see that most of my fellow students appeared relatively unenthused by the prospect of journalism. There’s only one other student I noticed who seemed properly…properly passionate. His name is Fitz. Leo Fitz, I think.”_

A pause.

_“I think he hates me. He won’t talk to me, even when we’re supposed to be in discussions, and when we’re not he just…stares at me. I can’t think what I’ve done to make him hate me, other than the fact that we’re obviously tied for the smartest people in this class.”_

Another pause.

_“Actually, come to think of it, I’m probably smarter so that’s probably it. He interests me though, but I can’t quite work out why. We’re working together on a presentation next week. Maybe I’ll find my answer then.”_

 

 

Her voice stopped, and Fitz had only a split second to be stunned by what he had just heard and by the startling insight into Jemma’s mind he had just been privy to, before the tape started playing again. This time, Jemma sounded far more upbeat and her tone was almost gushing.

 

 

_“Fitz and I are working together again! This is the third time this month our tutors have partnered us up and I’m starting to think it’s not a coincidence. My highest grades so far this term have been on the projects we’ve done together and I know Fitz’s have been too. I suppose…I suppose we’re just better journalists when we’re together. That’s quite a strange thing to think of, isn’t it?”_

Fitz could hear the smile in her voice when she said that _._

_“Anyway, I’m heading over to his flat now. We have to plan a list of interview questions to ask a premiership footballer at the start of a new season and I’m going to have to admit to him that the closest I’ve ever been to a football is the table top game I watched him play at that party last week. Still, I suppose something like that is the sort of thing you ought to tell your best friend-“_

Here, her voice hitched a little bit and broke into a gasp as both she and Fitz realised what she had just said. When she spoke again, Jemma’s voice on the tape was softer.

_“Because…because I suppose that’s what he is now. My best friend. And that’s an even stranger thing to think about.”_

She gave a little exhale _._

_“I wonder if he’d say the same thing about me.”_

 

 

Fitz stared at the tape player as it finished the recording and had to blink twice to clear his eyes of the tears threatening to form.

‘I would,’ he whispered but the tape wasn’t there to listen to his words, not when it still had more of Jemma’s to tell. Her next recording started to play.

 

 

_“I kissed him.”_

Her words were hushed, and she was speaking in the way Fitz recognised as her morning-after voice: quiet and low, as though having too much of a presence in the world was too painful.

_“I kissed Fitz. Or maybe he kissed me. I can’t quite remember how it happened. You see, I was rather drunk at the time and so was he…but it happened. We kissed. I kissed my best friend.”_

She sounded breathless and dazed, and Fitz felt his heart turn over in his chest at the thought that it had been him who had made her feel that way. But the feeling quickly evaporated when he heard the next of Jemma’s words.

_“Only…he doesn’t remember that it happened. I stayed over at his last night and I thought that this morning…maybe he’d…I thought that we could maybe…”_

There was a sigh.

_“But he doesn’t remember a thing. Nothing past his fourth shot, he says, although I could have sworn he’d thrown the first two over his shoulder. Anyway, I won’t…I won’t tell him. It would just make him worry and it would make things strange between us and I don’t want us to change. And besides, it’s not like…not like it was that important anyway.”_

A pause _._

_“But, just for the record…since that’s what this is…it was actually quite a nice kiss.”_

 

The recording stopped, and Fitz pressed pause on the player, leaving him alone in the silence again with only his resurfacing guilt for company.

He _had_ pretended not to have any recollection of the kiss, he remembered now. He had pulled a blank expression in the morning when Jemma had uncomfortably hinted towards it, and then turned away from her to hide from the hurt in her eyes.

He hadn’t thought it had meant anything to her. But evidently he had been wrong about that. And if the other recordings were anything to go by, he’d been wrong about a lot of other things too.

Pursing his lips together, Fitz pressed play again and let his head fall forwards onto his pillow as Jemma’s words began to fill his bedroom once more.

 

 

_“Well, this is it. We’ve graduated, Fitz and I, with first class honours the both of us. We are now officially journalism graduates and it’s quite giddying to think about. We have the whole rest of our lives in front of us now, to investigate and to document and…well, to live I suppose. Isn’t that an exciting thought?_

_Anyway, I have to leave again soon. There’s a party at one of the student bars in the city and Fitz is picking me up in ten minutes for us to go to it. And I know it sounds like a terribly immature thing for me to say, but I hope we both get ridiculously drunk. It might…it might be nice to kiss tonight…”_

 

_“It’s taken us six months, seven job interviews and one utterly disastrous Skype meeting that I think I’d rather forget all about than ever mention again, but I think we’ve finally done it. I think Fitz and I have found our perfect jobs. There’s a media centre, over in Boston, and it sounds absolutely perfect for the both of us. They have a social media platform which I’m sure they would be delighted to have Fitz’s talents work on, and the magazine itself has an opening for reporter journalists. Which I am._

_So, you see, it’s ideal really. We sent off our applications this morning and I’ve been looking at potential apartments for us all afternoon. There’s a really lovely little one for sale only fifteen minutes from the centre. Fitz says I’m getting too ahead of myself, but I don’t think that’s fair. After all, there’s no such thing as being too prepared and… when it comes to the two of us, I want…_

_This is something I want to be prepared for. The two of us, being together, just like always. And I can’t wait.”_

 

_“This is Jemma Simmons, now with a BA Honours in Journalism, ending her progress log for…well, this didn’t end up being a log for what I thought it would be at all. I thought it was going to chart my progress in my degree and then in my career. But it’s ended up as a record of something else. Something that’s ended up being far more important._

_I received my letter from Boston today. They want me. Whenever I want to start, I can just hop on a plane and be over there. I could be starting a new job this time tomorrow and it might possibly the best job I could ever wish for, an opportunity I’ll never have again…but I don’t want it. Not anymore._

_I’m at Fitz’s place right now. I’m in his bedroom, sitting on his bed, and he’s in the kitchen making dinner which is probably somewhere I should be too actually, if I want to eat something this evening that isn’t charred to within an inch of its life. But instead, I’m here and I’m finishing this recording. When I started this tape, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted. But it turns out there’s something here I want even more than being a journalist in America and I think…I think I might be close to getting it._

_I think I’m in love with Fitz. I think I’m in love with my best friend._

_I, ah…I thought that would be hard to say into here. But it wasn’t. Actually, it’s probably the easiest thing I’ve ever reported._

_I suppose there’s nothing left to record on this tape. This is the end of that dream, if you like, but I can’t say I’m especially sad to say goodbye to it, even after all this years. I’d like to hope that now I’ve found an even better dream.”_

 

 

It was only when he heard the tape click that Fitz realised the recordings had come to an end. He lay very still on his bed, afraid that moving too soon might fracture the moment and he would sit up to find that the last hour had been nothing but a fever dream, and the tape recorder and Jemma’s voice had never been there at all.

Her words were still repeating over and over in his mind: _I think I’m in love with my best friend_.

 _Oh, shit_.

Carefully, Fitz shifted and pushed himself up into a sitting position on the bed. He instantly reached for the tape player, eager to be able to hold it in his hands again, and let his fingers run over the tired plastic and then trace her name on the bottom.

Inside, his heart was thumping and his mind was reeling and it felt like the world had been swept out from underneath his feet and left him freefalling, with no way of knowing when his feet would ever touch the ground again. Jemma had always made him feel like that, in the most breath-taking way imaginable.

It seemed that, even after all this time, she still did.

_I think I’m in love with you, Fitz._

When he brought his hands up to rub at his face again, Fitz found his cheeks were wet with tears.

 

 

 

The streetlamps at the side of the road were just beginning to flicker off, making way for the wan, hazy half-light of the dawn, as Fitz made his way down the street. His hands were dug low in his pockets, even now making sure the tape recorder was still there and still real. He didn’t even need to look up to know where he was going. His feet had traced this path so many times he could have done it with his eyes closed the movement was so automatic.

Even if he hadn’t walked this way for three months, his compass was still pointing towards north.

The light was on in Jemma’s bedroom as he turned into her street. Or at least, the light was on in the room he assumed was still Jemma’s. She might have moved since he last saw her, since he was last here, since he made the biggest mistake of his life. There might be someone else living in her house now.

Not that he didn’t have a plan for if that happened though, and the front door opened to reveal a perfect stranger standing on the threshold.

‘I’m sorry,’ he’d say. ‘I was just looking for something that used to be here.’

‘Oh, really?’ they’d say. ‘And what was that?’

‘The other half of my heart.’

It would be funny, Fitz mused as he hopped up the three steps to her front door, in a sad sort of way, and it would be melodramatic to a point where it would have made Jemma roll her eyes and utter a soft ‘urgh, _Fitz_ ’ if she’d been around to hear him say it.

God, he missed her.

Fitz exhaled, taking a moment to ready his beating heart, and brought up his fist to knock at the door.

Once he had, he fell back, letting his left foot bounce on the step below and his bottom teeth worry his lower lip. Inside his pocket, his hand closed and unclosed around the tape recorder.

A few agonising minutes passed and when no one came to the door, Fitz squared up his shoulders and stepped forward to knock again. This time, after a heartbeat, he raised his voice.

‘Jemma?’

After so long, the syllables of her name on his lips made the word end in a gasp and he had to try again.

‘Jemma? Are you here? It’s me. Can we…can we talk?’

He knocked again, then again, and his fingers hovered over the letterbox as he considered lifting it up to call through for her. He decided against doing that when he noticed an old lady across the road peer at his suspiciously through her net curtains and cupped his hands to call for her again.

‘Listen, Jemma, I know that you’re mad at me. And I know that I deserve that too, I understand now where I didn’t before. You don’t have to forgive me and I’m not expecting you to. But, please…please just let me tell you…’

_That I’m sorry._

_That I love you too_.

The front door in front of him remained stubbornly closed.

Fitz bit his lip, all the fire that he had felt in his chest as he had left his apartment slowly ebbing away until all he was left with was desperation. What was there for him to say to her, that could make any difference when told through a locked door and five years’ worth of silent love? What words were there, for him to ever be able to explain? The answer, quite simply, was that he did not have those words.

But he did have somebody else’s.

Fitz lifted Jemma’s tape recorder out of his pocket, briefly brushing his thumbs over the buttons. Throwing the light in the upstairs window one last glance, he sighed and placed the player down on her doormat. Then, he pressed play.

Jemma’s recordings began to play from the beginning again, her words rising up from the porch and carrying across the street, up into the air. Fitz liked to imagine that they were expanding as they did so, until they filled the whole universe to the brim with their story. He closed his eyes and let the words wash over him.

Listening to them for the second time, and knowing how they ended, made him notice different things. He heard every soft rise and fall of her tone, every time her words cracked under the weight of her quiet restrain. He heard her growing, getting older, and turning from the girl he had first fallen head over heels for into the woman he loved to the very depths of his soul. He heard the love in her voice, where his ears had been closed to it before.

The tape clicked, and Fitz opened his eyes. There was still no movement from inside Jemma’s house and the tiny tear-drop of hope that he had been holding onto like a lifeline was slipping through his fingers quicker than grains of sand on a beach. Jemma wasn’t coming out.

Swallowing quickly to reign in the burn at the back of his throat, Fitz stooped to collect up the tape recorder. He stepped up to the door to push it back through the letterbox. As much as he wanted to cling onto the words, they weren’t his to keep and even if Jemma didn’t live here anymore the new owners would have a better way to contact her than he did.

He was just reaching his hand out for the letterbox when the door swung open abruptly, and Fitz almost fell forward onto the carpet in surprise.

All of a sudden Jemma was standing in front of him with one hand holding open her door, dressed in a t-shirt and pyjama shorts with her hair hanging loose around her shoulders. Her hair was longer than it had been three months ago and she was paler too, but her eyes as they looked up to find him were very wide and very brown and very beautiful.

‘Fitz?’

‘Hey,’ he gasped, stumbling to stand up straight and remember how to breathe. ‘I’ve been…I was knocking, I didn’t think that you would…’

‘I was in the shower,’ Jemma broke in, her voice wobbling. It was only then that Fitz noticed her hair was wet, barely towelled and quickly brushed. ‘It was only when I got out and I went into my room that I heard…well…’

‘Yourself?’ Fitz raised his hand holding the recorder towards her.

Hesitantly, Jemma reached out for it. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘Under my bed. I moved it to hoover last night and it was there.’

Jemma rolled her eyes, in a gesture so achingly familiar it almost hurt to watch. ‘You mean to tell me you haven’t hovered under your bed in _three months_?’

‘ _That’s_ really the detail you’re choosing to focus on here?’

She made a soft tutting noise and Fitz felt his heart constrict in his chest with the sound. Then Jemma looked up at him and her lips started to quiver anxiously.

‘You, um…you listened to them then?’

‘Ah…Yeah.’ Sheepishly, Fitz scratched the back of his neck and winced. _I think I’m in love with my best friend_. ‘Yeah, I did.’

Jemma nodded slowly, her hands by her sides folding and unfolding themselves into gentle fists. ‘There was quite a lot on there. That I can remember, anyway.’

 _You always remember everything_.

Fitz looked up to meet her eyes, which were carefully challenging him. Waiting to hear what he was going to say.

 ‘I saw your letter,’ he blurted out. ‘From Boston. It was in your bag and I saw the logo from the media centre and I saw that you’d got the job. And you _deserved_ that job, Jemma, it was everything you’ve been working for as long as I’ve known you, and God knows even before that. But I know _you_ , and I know the way that you think. I would have been the only thing that held you back from taking it and I couldn’t do that to you, not when I…when I…’

He trailed off, the words he had been meaning to say for the past five years fading once more before they had the chance to pass his lips.

Jemma was silent, regarding him carefully with her brow furrowed. ‘Was that…was that really what you thought?’

Fitz shrugged dejectedly and watched as Jemma groaned, a sudden fire he had never seen before flashing behind her eyes.

‘Oh, Fitz…’ She stepped towards him, her hands coming up to flutter around her face as she spoke. ‘I never showed you the letter because I already knew I wasn’t going to take the job. And I knew that if I showed it to you then you’d try and convince me to change my mind.’ She gave him a wry smile. ‘Because _I_ know _you_ too, you know. As soon as I got home from yours that morning, I rang Boston and told them I wasn’t going to take the job. Then I went straight back to you, to tell you.’ Her eyes as she gazed at him were swimming with tears. ‘Only you wouldn’t let me in.’

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Fitz gave a short, sharp nod as he remembered the morning and how excruciating the pain in her voice had been as she called through the door. It was only a moment before he felt Jemma’s hand slide over his fingers, drawing his hand away from his face so she could look at him again.

‘The reason,’ she continued, her voice shaking, ‘that I was so excited for those jobs wasn’t because they were in Boston, or because I thought that it would be a good opportunity. I was excited because we were going to go there _together_. You and me. Of _course_ I wasn’t going to take the job without you; why would I, when the part of it that meant the most to me wasn’t going to be there?’

Her hand was still lingering over his, her fingers brushing the back of his palm as she paused, taking a deep shuddering sigh.

‘There is nothing,’ Jemma said, and her words were very deliberate, making Fitz wonder whether she had planned them in her head for months, ‘that is more important to me than you. And I’m…I’m sorry that I never had the words to say that to you myself until now.’

Fitz exhaled, and the tight fist that had been clenching his heart tight finally let go.

‘I’m sorry too,’ he whispered, then motioned upwards with his hand holding the tape recorder. ‘For, uh…for listening to your private tapes…’ He looked up to meet her eyes gazing back at him and could only hope that the sincerity he was feeling could be reflected back to her. ‘And for everything else.’

Jemma gave a watery snort. ‘Yes, well, so you should be.’

‘And I am!’ Impulsively, he reached upwards and took a hold of her fingers that were still hovering over the back of his hand. ‘I really…truly am.’

Jemma rolled her eyes fondly, and twisted her hand in his so she could give his fingers a reassuring squeeze.

‘Fitz, I _know_ ,’ she said softly, and somehow with those simple words she managed to take away all the tension between them and offer her unconditional forgiveness.

Was it really that easy?

 _Of course it’s that easy_ , Fitz thought, _it’s Jemma_.

He took a step back, so he was on the step below the front door before hesitating.

‘There’s just…there’s one more thing I need to know.’

‘Oh?’ Jemma frowned, her eyebrows scrunching together, and she tilted her head to one side to regard him. ‘And what’s that?’

‘What you said on here…’ He held up the tape recorder again and took a deep breath. ‘Is that, ah…is that still true?’

Jemma paused, her fingertips inside his gently tracing his palm as if she was mapping the lines that ran from there straight to his heart.

‘It’s almost still true.’

Fitz felt his heart skip a beat and his head shot up upwards towards her. But the protests that she didn’t owe him anything, that he completely understood, that this was absolutely _fine_ , died in his throat when he saw the intensity in the way she was looking at him. It was the way he had imagined her looking when she whispered “ _I think I’m in love with my best friend”_ to her tape recorder.

‘There’s nothing for me to think about anymore.’

And then she was tugging on his hand to bring herself forward, and she was on the step above him so they were about the same height and her free hand was cupping his face as she brought herself closer to him and Fitz closed his eyes as their lips met in the middle.

The tape recorder slipped from his fingers as he brought his hands up to hold Jemma steady by her waist as she kissed him, letting her use both her hands to frame his face while she ran her thumb down his cheekbone. Her lips were gentle as they moved over his, pressing softer in some places and harder in others but always making his heart race and his breathing hitch.

He kissed her back, and felt her gasp and then heard it change to a laugh as she leant against his lips.

They had kissed before, dozens of times at dozens of indistinguishable parties full of indistinguishable people, but standing on Jemma’s doorstep with his lips dancing over hers and his hands reaching up to cradle her back, Fitz realised that, looking back, all of those times had been coated in sepia and blurred by intoxication. This, at last, was their first kiss in technicolour and he didn’t ever want to go back to living in black and white.

But the eager tenderness that Jemma was leaning into him with, and the way her fingers trailed down his chest as if she expected to find gold at the base of his heart told him that he never had to worry about that.

From where they were now, there was no going back

When they finally drew apart, somewhat reluctantly, Fitz opened his eyes. Jemma had leant her forehead against his to rest and as he felt her hot breath against his lips, the end of her nose just brushed along his own, letting him see all her freckles dotted across her face in constellations he couldn’t wait until he had the pleasure to learn.

Jemma’s eyelids fluttered open and her gaze instantly centred in on him. Fitz watched as her mouth quirked upwards, stretching her lips into a wide, delighted grin, a grin that warmed him to the very tips of his toes and the edges of his being.

 _Here we are_ , Fitz thought happily and he pulled her into him so he could kiss her again.

 _If she’s my due north, then I think I’m finally back home_.

 

 


End file.
